#Decelerate crossword free#

Instead, she has re-cemented her status as one of America’s edgiest superstars, a sorcerer of synthesis and excess. When the single “Break My Soul” polished up some of the most familiar keyboard tones in club music, it invited concerns that Beyoncé’s dance phase would be touristic and retro. Thankfully, she’s also staying innovative. Her next two “acts” may return to pop-R&B balladry, but for now, she’s staying visceral and thumpy. But she used to let the listener rest with slow jams-of which the closest thing on Renaissance is “Plastic Off the Sofa,” a bustling ode to rough intimacy. Beyoncé has always wanted to get you bodied, of course. The pulsing beat of Renaissance almost never pauses, though it does morph-from the pistonlike pumping of house and techno to the snapping and swaying of Afrobeats to the tick-tick-boom of various dance- rap styles that serve the almighty twerk. That place turned out to be the same one where lots of people have found release and freedom: the dance floor. Read: Beyoncé’s search for home continues on ‘Black Is King’ A place to scream, release, feel freedom.”

#Decelerate crossword free#

“A place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking.

During lockdown, she wanted “a safe place, a place without judgment,” she wrote on her website. But the pandemic coincided with what she calls a “journey of exploration,” resulting in a “three act project,” which Renaissance kicks off. For decades, Beyoncé has worked meticulously to project a near-papal sense of calm and control. How exciting to see chaos from pop’s greatest neat freak (a title fated by astrology, as she now celebrates on the disco-dusted “Virgo’s Groove”). Listening to this one is like becoming a pinball. Listening to her past albums felt like being whisked in a luxury sedan through a landscape of mountains, valleys, and meadows. The songs clatter, wobble, and lurch into one another while Beyoncé wavers between singing and doing silly voices, in multitrack. Conventional songwriting rules, polite-taste paradigms, and the best practices for headache avoidance were clearly not priorities here.

Beyoncé herself might admit that her seventh solo album, Renaissance, is a mess.